Depressive symptomatology in men receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer: a controlled comparison. By Lee et al. 2014
Key sentence from the paper: “… rates of clinically significant depressive symptomatology were significantly higher at follow-up in participants receiving ADT than in prostate cancer controls and non-cancer controls.”
For the full abstract, see: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24924331
Commentary: It has been a debate as to whether ADT causes depression in prostate cancer patients. This is a well-designed study which does indeed document an increased incidence of depression in patients on ADT compared to properly matched controls with essentially the same disease status and treatment, but who were not receiving ADT. Granted not all patients get depressed when on ADT, but a significant number of men do get depressed. The authors feel that patients on ADT should be screened for depression and, when necessary, offered appropriate psychotherapy and/or pharmacological treatment.
Common signs of depression include a loss of interest in things that were previously enjoyable (e.g. hobbies, interests), and feeling down or sad more days than not. Men on ADT, who have already had a depressive episode at some point in their life, are likely at even higher risk.
Lee M, Jim HS, Fishman M, Zachariah B, Heysek R, Biagioli M, Jacobsen PB. 2014. Depressive symptomatology in men receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer: a controlled comparison. Psychooncology. 13 June 2014 [Epub ahead of print]